Nine new judges, including three women, were on Thursday appointed to the Supreme Court with President Ram Nath Kovind signing their warrants of appointment, news agency PTI quoted sources in the government as saying. A formal notification would be issued shortly, they said.
The central government approved all nine names, including three women high court judges, recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium for appointment to the top court and forwarded the recommendations to the President for issuance of warrants of appointment.
The SC Collegium, comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices U U Lalit, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao, had on August 17, recommended nine names, including eight High Court judges and an advocate, for elevation to the apex court.
The four chief justices of different high courts whose names were recommended are — Justices Abhay Shreeniwas Oka (Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court), Vikram Nath (Chief Justice of Gujarat High Court), Jitendra Kumar Maheshwari (Chief Justice of Sikkim High Court) and Justice Hima Kohli (Chief Justice of Telengana High Court).
Besides them, names of Justice B V Nagarathna from the Karnataka High Court, Justice C T Ravikumar of Kerala High Court, Justice M M Sundresh of Madras High Court and Justice Bela Trivedi from the Gujarat High Court judge were recommended by the Collegium.
Senior advocate and former Additional Solicitor General P S Narasimha has become the sixth lawyer to be elevated to the apex court bench directly from the Bar.
Significantly, no appointment has been made after the superannuation of the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi on March 19, 2019.
With the retirement of Justice R F Nariman on August 12 and Justice Navin Sinha on August 19, the strength of judges in the top court had come down to 24. The appointments have filled all current vacancies taking the working strength to 33 against a sanctioned strength of 35.